Woke up in the middle of the night and decided to crack open the volume of HITCHCOCK TRUFFAUT that's been jeering at me unread from my shelf for a while now. A few pages in and I was prompted to beam Mernau's DER LETZTE MANN on the projector, which both Hitchcock and Truffaut express their admiration for. First minute into this 1924 silent film and I was hooked! The framing and shots are just absolutely gorgeous, and the story intense, told entirely without words got me thinking about the big vacuum left unfilled by the absence of silent visual storytelling in today's world. The potential to reach people across borders regardless of language or culture is immense, especially if phones/social-media were to be utilized as the delivery mechanism. But that would necessitate coming up with short ultra-condensed narratives of about one minute or a minute and half tops. Which in itself is something of an attractive limitation.
#journal #reads #film
Have yet to crack how to balance all the things. Managed to boil down all regular tasks into daily, weekly, and monthly, but it's the weekly ones that make maintaining the others particularly difficult. Because sometimes each one of those weekly tasks can take up a full-day, in which case that's an entire week gone right there, leaving little to no room for the dailies or monthlies. And that doesn't even including things like parenting, tidying up, laundry, or a semblance of social life.
I gotta say, being over 40 and still trying to figure out effective time-management is kind of depressing. Certainly the eternal struggle that never ends, and the one thing they never bother to teach you at school.
#journal
What a joy it is to see Deena Mohammed's SHUBEIK LUBEIK end up on so many TCJ contributor's Best-of-2023 Lists! So happy to see that book get the recognition it very much deserves.
#journal #comix
Inboxes zero, and all caught up on my RSS feed as well, just in time for the year ahead.
Dropped the last of the Mythomatic orders at the post office and dragged a bunch of art pieces to my storage unit. Thoughts about turning RESTRICTED FREQUENCY into a weekly column of sorts are now looking wholly unrealistic given all the things. May have to settle for a monthly column instead. Less than ideal, but better 12 well thought out mail blasts than 52 half-assed ones, right?
#journal
Cracking open my first journal of the year and setting the tone for 2024.
Eight filled out suns to represent all completed chapters from my godforsaken graphic novel, only two chapters left to fill. I recall the very first couple of chapters I managed to pump out in 2, maybe 3 months, so I know I have it in me to get these out quick. Still scripting the very last chapter, which I'd like to finish before resuming pencils on the one before the last.
Funny, I was a wide-eyed newly wed working on those first couple of chapters back when. Now I'm newly divorced (a process that ate up most of 2023) working on the last two. Not dwelling on it or anything, but the mood is very different, perhaps aptly so in many ways.
Looks like much of the week will involve mapping out the year ahead, something I should've taken care of in December but there was a home-studio that needed improving and I've only got two hands and one single head, a relatively mediocre one at that.
#journal
And I'm out of paint. Shop doesn't reopen till Monday so it looks like I'm going to have to defer the remainder of my home improvement activities to the new year, something I was hoping to avoid, but alas. I'm not the best multi-tasker, so these past couple weeks of wall-painting have resulted in other house things going unattended to. Will attempt to remedy that today and enter the new year with an adequately operation space.
Albeit a half-painted one.
Inbox(es) at 170, RSS at 39. Ought to look into those as well.
#journal
Painting of living room has commenced. My break between coats has been to read passages from Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION TRILOGY, a 1955 hardback edition I purchased for $8.50 back in Denver some six years ago and never got around to reading.
First of all; I really cannot believe it's been six whole years, and second of all; thus begins my mission to read all the unread books in my possession in the new year to come before buying anything new.
Right.
130 pages in and enjoying it a great deal.
#journal #reads
Inbox(es) at 116 and RSS at 38. The dookie brown of the office walls have successfully been repainted white. Needs one more coat of paint though before I can move onto the living room.
Cloudy and rainy today and will likely stay that way all day. A good day for podcasts, hot chocolate, and home improvement.
Watched SHOWGIRLS for the first time last night. A blind spot in my Verhoeven oeuvre and found that I quite enjoyed it. Not surprised by the critical backlash compared to the director's previous feats; Americans are far more squeamish about the abundance of tits than they are about the abundance of bullet holes.
#journal
Inbox(es) at 104, RSS at 71. Today's to-do list entails:
1) Pack and ship Mythomatic orders.
2) More on yesterday's design thing.
3) Two in-person meets.
In addition to tidying around the studio, exercising, and shaving my chest.
Cloudy today, but relatively warm. Much coffee will be consumed.
#journal
Thinking about popular creators who have opted for what may be considered the least commercially viable path but have gone on to reach great acclaim and success with their work nonetheless.
Richard Linklater in filmmaking, Chris Ware in comix, Thomas Pynchon in novels, perhaps? Or even Kurt Vonnegut really.
Inboxes at a combined 112 and RSS reader at 122. Would like to get them down to zero, in addition to exercising, heading out for groceries, and working on a design thing today. Here we go.
#journal